This cynical Stephen King adaptation wastes the considerable talents of Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, and exemplifies the worst tendencies of the contemporary blockbuster, writes Nick Pinkerton.
Wednesday 16 August 2017

Women will be plentiful on screen at the horror festival, if not behind the camera, from the tragic death of Jayne Mansfield to fictional tales of obsession, mania, murder and disfigurement. Anton Bitel looks at the fascinating female-centric stories playing this year.
Tuesday 15 August 2017

Andrew Roberts on an impressively versatile British actor, remembered for a raft of striking film and TV characters, from a chilling psychopath in Twisted Nerve to the definitive Ricki Tarr and the sardonic lead in Shelley.
Friday 11 August 2017

For Syria’s own filmmakers in search of a new language of resistance to an authoritarian state, the collapse of their country has brought both freedom and tragedy, writes Charlotte Bank.
Tuesday 8 August 2017

Amid a rush of handwringing films dwelling on Syria’s easy spectacles of horror, argues Bidisha, there are also many more nuanced and resonant films made by people on the ground, listening to voices that otherwise go unheard.
Friday 4 August 2017

Competitions

We have four copies to give away of the first-ever Blu-ray box-set of Ray Harryhausen’s films, including It Came from Beneath the Sea, 20 Million Miles to Earth and The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, from Powerhouse films’ new label Indictator.

At the Bologna-inspired festival in Bristol, classic films were celebrated with some smart repertory programming, while parallels were drawn between the state of cinema now and in its infancy, reports Pamela Hutchinson.

Donald Trump’s chief adviser made his political fortune as the director of a catalogue of confused but delirious movie polemics that trumpet a fallen America awaiting a saviour. Celluloid Liberation Front watches another smashing of the line between fact and fiction.

As Stephen Frears’ biopic of the controversial gay playwright returns to cinemas, we reprint the original Sight & Sound review from 1987, in which Richard Mayne finds the film perfectly captures its subject’s magnetism.

Renowned for her star-making turn in Jules et Jim and her collaborations with Louis Malle and Orson Welles, the iconic French actor aided the birth of the nouvelle vague with her downcast glamour and husky voice, says Ginette Vincendeau.

Reassigning Moss’s detective Robin Griffin from small-town New Zealand to the sex trade of cosmopolitan Sydney, the second series of Jane Campion’s police procedural continues to probe the director’s faith in the ultimate intelligence of the body, says Sophie Mayer.

Merchant-Ivory’s third E.M. Forster adaptation was first released during a time of economic depression in the UK. As it returns to cinemas we republish the original Sight & Sound review, in which Lizzie Francke hails its “rigorous inquest into a bygone era”.

The Argentian director’s long-awaited new film Zama has just been announced for the 2017 Venice Film Festival. Two years ago, Diego Lerer visited the set and spoke to her about the radical language of the film’s source novel and how to shoot a period film on a modest budget.

Watching two ostensibly different films back to back can entirely colour our understanding of them both, as when Brad Stevens viewed Sidney Lumet’s 1990 police thriller along side Otomo Katsuhiro’s classic 1987 anime.

From Martin Landau’s searing early role as the pent-up henchman of North by Northwest to latter-day recognition in Crimes and Misdemeanors and Ed Wood, his blazing blue eyes had it – but what was it, asks Kim Morgan?

Basil Dearden’s gay-blackmail drama, which helped to change the law on homosexuality in the UK, is back in UK cinemas in a restored digital print. On its first release in 1961, Sight & Sound contributor Terence Kelly praised its groundbreaking candour and a first-class performance by Dirk Bogarde.

The co-founder of Britain’s key arthouse distribution and exhibition company Artificial Eye (and later New Wave) introduced British filmgoers to a deep seam of world cinema across four decades, says Geoff Andrew.

The original Night of the Living Dead pioneer gave us a new vision of both horror movies and of social apocalypse – and his influence just keeps on rising. Kim Newman pays tribute to the late titan of savage satire.

From New Hollywood rebel to arch Hollywood devil, Jack Nicholson has been our gold-standard baby boomer, on the run from his demons even as he upends the world – and hounds down the last laugh. As he turns 80, Leigh Singer looks back at the art of Jack.